Week 1: Mark It Zero vs. Green Hornets

I’ll be doing a recap of our Thursday night league hockey games mostly for record-keeping purposes. Quite frankly, I find that I easily forget the details and minutiae of each individual game over the years, so having something to look back on is paramount. It’ll be similar to what I did with my roller blog, but maybe not as edgy - at least until I get to know these guys better. Yes, these posts won’t necessarily mean much to my avid readers (cricket, cricket), but I’ll certainly try to make them entertaining reads. 

First thing’s first, we got our jerseys Thursday. Look at these babies:

It’s an away Nashville Predators jersey. Our goalie, Justin, found this logo online, took the bowling ball out of it and made the text Beetlejuice-y or something. I don’t like how “Reebok” gets in the way but everything else is on point. To top it off, I played on a spring league team called the Jr. Predators back in the day so I already have matching socks. We play in a mostly Big Lebowski-themed league. Not many teams in the league, as it is invite-only, but other team names include Lebowski, Nice Marmot, Da Bulls (?) and of course, The Green Hornets. So I redact the last statement and replace it with: we’re in a league that’s trying to be a Big Lebowski-themed league.

VS GREEN HORNETS

We were shorthanded this game - only expected to have 2 bench players but ended up having 3 total. The Hornets looked like they had around the same amount so we had no excuse in this one. Miller couldn’t make it - don’t remember whether it was a concert or family member in town but he won’t make the next game either. Somebody had better get his ass in here…

I found myself playing center in this game mostly because nobody else wanted a part of it. I’m used to playing wing also, but figured why the hell not? Taking faceoffs felt a bit awkward but I won probably close to half of them.

We dug ourselves into an 0-2 hole against this team in the 1st period. I’d say that period was our worst. We were moving the puck well for a team that hadn’t met each other before, let alone played hockey together, but we weren’t playing as aggressively as we could’ve. I somehow knew we were better than this despite having known these guys for about 40 minutes.

They had a girl on their team that was putting it through her legs in warmups (focus here, still talkin’ hockey), real showboat-y style stickhandler. I was impressed. The last time I played against a girl she was a member of the Canadian National team and she wasn’t nearly as good of a player as this gal.

Second period we got serious. I don’t remember if it was the tying goal or the go-ahead, but some talented defenseman of ours - I’m thinkin’ Ben - threaded a pass and sent me streaking in on the goaltender. The pass helped me get behind their defense, and I put it away through the goaltender’s pads as hard as I could. 

We scored a few more goals and got to a comfortable lead. I notched another by simply anticipating a defensive breakdown on the part of the Hornets while forechecking and just stole it and buried it. Some defenseman on the Hornets was telling me to calm down as I was shouting (to my team) from the bench. I didn’t know what to say to the guy. What in the scoreboard is going on here?

Justin played very well in net, helping us out by getting some whistles when we needed the rest the most. One fantastic save was actually made by Juke, who from my account, swatted a goal-line puck out of mid-air that was otherwise destined for the Green Hornets’ side of the scoresheet. Right after that happened you could hear everyone make a commotion, some amazement, some moans. Just a collective OOOoooehehhHHhhhwfeooooooooooo.

Final score ended up being a 6-4 win but the last two goals they scored were in the waning moments of the game. I’m a little upset we couldn’t hold up but won’t lose sleep over it.

stats (season)